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Location: The planet Terminus, site of the Encyclopedia Foundation on the periphery of the galaxy

Re: Season FIVE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

No one needs to worry about DS9 or VOY not getting an HD makeover. The studio isn't about to stop making money off these properties. The long-term cost of doing nothing, sacrificing any possible future use of these series, isn't going to be acceptable for them. Don't ever underestimate the studio's desire to continue milking these shows for all they're worth.

No one needs to worry about DS9 or VOY not getting an HD makeover. The studio isn't about to stop making money off these properties. The long-term cost of doing nothing, sacrificing any possible future use of these series, isn't going to be acceptable for them. Don't ever underestimate the studio's desire to continue milking these shows for all they're worth.

Agreed, although I think the matter of upgrading the visual effects from SD to HD is an open question. The studio invested the money to do that for TNG, the most popular of the Berman-era shows. Will they invest the same (or more) in DS9, which is less popular? We've already seen Fox decide to simply upscale SD effects for The X-Files in HD, rather than spend the money to re-do them, so it's not as if this is without precedent.

No one needs to worry about DS9 or VOY not getting an HD makeover. The studio isn't about to stop making money off these properties. The long-term cost of doing nothing, sacrificing any possible future use of these series, isn't going to be acceptable for them. Don't ever underestimate the studio's desire to continue milking these shows for all they're worth.

Agreed, although I think the matter of upgrading the visual effects from SD to HD is an open question. The studio invested the money to do that for TNG, the most popular of the Berman-era shows. Will they invest the same (or more) in DS9, which is less popular? We've already seen Fox decide to simply upscale SD effects for The X-Files in HD, rather than spend the money to re-do them, so it's not as if this is without precedent.

Not just X-Files, Fox set their precedent a few years back with Firefly.

No one needs to worry about DS9 or VOY not getting an HD makeover. The studio isn't about to stop making money off these properties. The long-term cost of doing nothing, sacrificing any possible future use of these series, isn't going to be acceptable for them. Don't ever underestimate the studio's desire to continue milking these shows for all they're worth.

Agreed, although I think the matter of upgrading the visual effects from SD to HD is an open question. The studio invested the money to do that for TNG, the most popular of the Berman-era shows. Will they invest the same (or more) in DS9, which is less popular? We've already seen Fox decide to simply upscale SD effects for The X-Files in HD, rather than spend the money to re-do them, so it's not as if this is without precedent.

Not just X-Files, Fox set their precedent a few years back with Firefly.

That's true. Was that a remaster, though, or was it the same master used for broadcast?

Agreed, although I think the matter of upgrading the visual effects from SD to HD is an open question. The studio invested the money to do that for TNG, the most popular of the Berman-era shows. Will they invest the same (or more) in DS9, which is less popular? We've already seen Fox decide to simply upscale SD effects for The X-Files in HD, rather than spend the money to re-do them, so it's not as if this is without precedent.

Not just X-Files, Fox set their precedent a few years back with Firefly.

That's true. Was that a remaster, though, or was it the same master used for broadcast?

Yes it's more like the ENT Blu-ray situation, where it was already that way in the (otherwise) HD master.

What I was thinking of was the "we're not spending money on upgrading the CGI" precedent was already set by Firefly.

Yes it's more like the ENT Blu-ray situation, where it was already that way in the (otherwise) HD master.

What I was thinking of was the "we're not spending money on upgrading the CGI" precedent was already set by Firefly.

Yeah. If only CBS had access to some of the original assets that could be re-rendered in HD, they wouldn't have to do everything from scratch. In the immortal last words of Captain Kirk in the last episode of the original series, "if only..."

My feeling is that CBS-D will tackle DS9 using the same approach as TNG, then place VOY as the third project, simply because they know the Blu-ray upgrades sell, they have learned many lessons from the TNG project (S2 must have been particularly instructive), and the techniques have been honed with regards to managing the workflow etc.

The TNG remaster has been an enormous hit by all public accounts, and I don't see them doing that show a disservice.

Once they start on DS9, I'll start with that show as well, and will add Voyager if that is tackled.

Yeah. If only CBS had access to some of the original assets that could be re-rendered in HD, they wouldn't have to do everything from scratch. In the immortal last words of Captain Kirk in the last episode of the original series, "if only..."

They likely do have access to some assets of DS9, and the vast majority of VOY. Rob Bonchune says he has most of the files that Foundation did for the franchise. If he doesn't have 'em it seems like his co-worker at Foundation Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz does.

Digital Muse was doing most of the work on Deep Space Nine – I don’t know if they’d changed their name to Eden FX – but they did most of the CG for that show. We [Foundation] did a fair amount of work for that show as well, but I can’t say that we were regularly doing weekly work on DS9. We were certainly part of the bigger shows, because they just didn’t have the capacity to do it all; it just needed two big teams.

Bonchune went on to describe how he has all of the original assets for not only his work with Foundation Imaging on Deep Space Nine, but also the vast majority of Star Trek: Voyager

Foundation did nearly all of the work for VOY but only did extra work for DS9, Digital Muse (more recently reborn as EdenFX) did most of DS9.

So there may actually be more of VOY assets than DS9's easily available. But if Foundation's work included most of the common ship classes seen on DS9 it could really help CBS-D.

You sure about that? Last time I saw a D1 deck it looked like it could've come out of an old UNIVAC computer, and it certainly wasn't small enough to fit on a table (unlike what we see in Star Trek's 25th anniversary special where there are two VTR's on a desk). Not too mention they were notoriously expensive to use.

I think he's referring to the color crosstalk or "rainbow effects" where high luma frequencies sometimes end up in the chroma signal. You could always see it on Worf's sash, for instance:

I've always chalked that up to the nature of the NTSC signal at SD levels, even for component video. Since even in "All Good Things" on the DVD when the camera is pulling up from the lit floor grates in the courtroom there is rainbowing from there not being enough information to seperating the slats. The old newscaster striped-tie affair.

I used to have 2 D1 decks at my studio...cutting edge for the time, it wouldn't at all be unthinkable that they'd be using that as its WAY better than 1" which I also had at one time.

A rainbow cross-talk affect won't happen over component nearly as much as composite, but always occurs with composite. D1 is a Digital composite signal. Beta/SP & Digital Betacam are component and wouldn't show that unless high frequency detail (more of a moire effect than rainbow cross-talk) was present.

D1 was digital component. D2 was Digital Composite, and on pg. 242 of the Reeves-Stevens "Making Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine" (December 1994) the authors mention that the film footage for DS9's Seasons 1&2 were transferred to D2 tape and D2 was the editing format.

Now then I was just watching "Suspicions", "Rightfule Heir" (TNG) and "Progress" (DS9), and I have a hard time believing TNG's last 4 seasons were edited on D1, since, when compared to DS9, the video quality is just not there for TNG. Yes, the episodes came from something of higher quality than 1", and while parts for the SFX may've been edited on D1 or D2, the seem to have been dumped to another format and the final masters, that have been used for the upressing and DVD's, appear to have originated in the analog domain.

When I search for it, I keep seeing repeatedly that everything after Season 1 (which was done all the way through the post-production process on 1" analog tape) was done on D1 tape. But the finished episodes certainly look like it was finished on composite video.

We were one of the 1st shows in the world to master final VFX to D1 tape.

Unitel Hollywood did the online
Image G did motion control Erik Nash
CIS and Price Pethel pin reg transfered from 35mm film to 1" tape

That description makes it sound like the raw footage was transferred to 1" tape, and then edited with the VFX on D1. If true, the live action being on 1" analog composite tape would certainly degrade the live action elements, before being finished on a component source.

Looks like the move D1 wasn't completed until Season 4. The article doesn't talk about how the scanned film was delivered at that time, so perhaps it was still delivered as 1" tape and then fed into the digital recorders they were using for editing.

Home for ST:TNG in the fourth season became The Post Group's new Digital Center in Edit Bay B. ST:TNG moved so it could work entirely in the digital format (D1) and abandon the fickle one-inch analog tape format. The reason ST:TNG was analog for three seasons is simple, the technology just did not exit. To bring this point home further, even now some of the equipment in the bay is still considered R & D (Research and Development) and came with no manuals.

D1 was digital component. D2 was Digital Composite, and on pg. 242 of the Reeves-Stevens "Making Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine" (December 1994) the authors mention that the film footage for DS9's Seasons 1&2 were transferred to D2 tape and D2 was the editing format.

Now then I was just watching "Suspicions", "Rightfule Heir" (TNG) and "Progress" (DS9), and I have a hard time believing TNG's last 4 seasons were edited on D1, since, when compared to DS9, the video quality is just not there for TNG. Yes, the episodes came from something of higher quality than 1", and while parts for the SFX may've been edited on D1 or D2, the seem to have been dumped to another format and the final masters, that have been used for the upressing and DVD's, appear to have originated in the analog domain.

While it's possible the DVDs were encoded from a composite source (hence the dot crawl and rainbow artifacts that were often seen) we know they were transferring from film at CIS to component D1 tape from S4 of TNG and still using the format in S1 of ENT (in ENT's case, VFX plates were downconverted to D1 from the 24p HD master, exclusively for bluescreen compositing and other VFX work which were done in the SD realm).

According to my October '93 issue of Cinefantastique, it says in an article about the S6 TNG VFX work that Digital Magic (who took over from the Post Group starting in S5) was working with D1 tape. Digital Magic also handled DS9 S1 at the same time. It seems odd that after all that careful work they would finish their on-line edit on D2 tape when DigiBeta was available, but anything's possible I suppose given they were still clinging to D1 for VFX when ENT launched!

But D2 for the initial film transfer? No way. There were too many bluescreen shots on these shows to use a composite tape format. Even in Seasons 1 & 2 of TNG they used a pin-registered Rank telecine that transferred all VFX footage in RGB component direct to an Abekas Digital Disc Recorder for compositing work.

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson

Here's the quote from "The Making Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine" by Judith & Garfield reeves-Stevens, published December 1994, pg 242:

Every physical element of Deep Space Nine is shot on film, not videotape. However, that film is just a first step. As soon as it's printed, it's sent to Unitel Video, where it is transferred to D2 videotape. Then the film is put into storage and ---- provided no disasters occur while an episode is in postproduction --- it never sees the light of day again.

The film elements that are transferred include everything shot on sets and on location by the first and second units, all the passes of models shot at Image G, and all film of physical matte paintings executed by Illusion Arts. Live-action footage is also duped onto standard VHS cassettes so the producers can review them as dailies.

Aside from D2 and VHS videotape, no other videotape is mentioned as being used. Also, you have to remember Digital Betacam wasn't on the market til 1993 (D2 was out in 1988), so before 1993 tapes used for final mastering would've been Betacam SP, D1 and D2. Also, you have to remember that the Reeves-Stevens, even though they were not producers at this point, for their book, they still had unlimited access to the sets for the book. And if you watch the opening credits for DS9, when we get the shot of the underside of the station with the core, I did notice rainbowing right along the edges of the lower part of the core.

Also, how do you know that CIS went right to D1. Even the Cinefantastique article, from what I've read of it in regards to D1, seems to be saying that Digital Magic did have D1 decks at the time, but there was no specific mention of TNG actually being edited on them.